One of those car-plug-in-things for the iPod and the car. I hardly use the car anymore for anything beyond going to Target but in the event of a road trip I’d like to be able to listen to my current musical taste and not that represented by the mix tapes from 1996 still in the car.
A hot stone massage. Weekly.
A local fiction class that doesn’t meet on Monday nights (that’s bellydance night, duh), doesn’t cost 4 million dollars, and doesn’t involve the words “give freedom to the story within” or “bring your voice to light” in the catalog blurb.
A key lime pie. The real kind, with actual key lime juice.
A round-the-world ticket. Or two.
Someone really tall to come to my house and change the light bulb in my closet because I can’t reach it even with the stepladder.
To buy a house one day. Maybe to buy a house with good friends.
To start cooking again and stop eating the majority of my food from boxes.
To improve dramatically at bellydance and join a troupe one day.
A pair of black knee-high boots that fit really well and look really awesome.
Oh, and obviously the perfect pants.
To spend more time with my friends’ kids and take them to the zoo and to the library and to the park and maybe give them illegal treats and be a good Auntie Chiara the way I had so many grown-ups be good aunties to me when I was a kid.
To have really great hair, forever and ever amen.
To get a decent digital camera and take more pictures that don’t suck.
To go on an awesome all-girl hiking trip where no one is yelling at me because I am slow or because I am tired or because I want to sit by the pretty waterfall and no one is gripped by summit fever and no one is obviously and unwillingly putting up with my lack of hiking prowess and where maybe we eat a lot of goat cheese. A kayak trip would be good, too.
A custom bag that uses the fabulous elephant ribbon I got a couple of weeks ago.
To visit Chicago this spring!
And to have lots of people come visit me in Seattle.
And a set of new sheets to go with my new awesome duvet cover.
For Anna to design me a tattoo and then maybe for Sundry to come with me and hold my hand while I get it done. I am going to do it, babies, but I’m going to count getting it before March 2006 as getting it for my thirtieth birthday.
To go to Vegas.
To see Avenue Q.
To own all of Andrea Barrett’s books.
For all of my favorite people from all the different parts of my life to get together in one beautiful place for, like, a week. We get to stay in a fancy hotel with room service, go skinny-dipping, get pedicures, go to an aquarium, ride elephants, play Dance Dance Revolution, watch movies, eat gelato every night, take naps in hammocks, sit in hot tubs, go hiking and roast marshmallows over a campfire, make out, sing karaoke, give each other fake tattoos, bake cakes, feed ducks and chickens, go kayaking, ride bikes, pick blueberries, watch movies, pick flowers and give each other big bouquets, ride rollercoasters, eat food on sticks, play strip Uno because I don’t know how to play poker, and jump on trampolines. That’s not just for my birthday, though, that’s always.